Pygmalion: Dialogue: Act 4: Eliza Doolittle, Henry Higgins

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Excerpt from Act 4 Dialogue: Eliza Doolittle, Henry Higgins

HIGGINS

[a genial afterthought occurring to him] I daresay my mother could find some chap or other who would do very well—

LIZA

We were above that at the corner of Tottenham Court Road.

HIGGINS

[waking up] What do you mean?

LIZA

I sold flowers. I didn’t sell myself. Now you’ve made a lady of me I’m not fit to sell anything else. I wish you’d left me where you found me.

Read the full dialogue.

Understanding the Given Circumstances

Henry Higgins, a professor of phonetics, wagers with Colonel Pickering that he can make a cockney flower girl pass for a duchess. When Eliza Doolittle, the flower girl, turns up on Higgins’s doorstep requesting language lessons, Pickering accepts Higgins’s bet.
Eliza stays at Higgins’s home, learning the manners and English of a lady. Pickering agrees to pay for her lessons, clothes, and any miscellaneous expenses.
Months later, Higgins and Pickering present Eliza at a garden party, a dinner party, and the opera. Eliza’s performance is flawless.
At midnight after the opera, the trio returns to Higgins’s laboratory. Higgins is annoyed that he can’t find his slippers. Eliza finds them and puts them in front of him, but he doesn’t notice her efforts, only that his slippers have suddenly appeared before him.
The two men congratulate each other on their successful experiment, ignoring Eliza entirely and talking about her as though she wasn’t there. Higgins says fervently, “Thank God it’s over!”, which wounds Eliza.
Pickering and Higgins head to bed, and over his shoulder Higgins tells Eliza to turn out the lights and ask the housekeeper to make tea in the morning, not coffee. This thoughtless remark, among all the others, pushes Eliza over the edge.

Blocking and Movement

In theater, blocking is the process of planning the actors’ physical movements and positions. Be sure to show respect and establish trust when working with scene partners. As you prepare to block this scene, ask yourself the following questions:

Shaw describes the laboratory in detail in Act II. What elements are necessary for your scene? Where are these elements located on the stage? Can you substitute anything? For example, Shaw mentions that the laboratory includes a grand piano. If you don’t have access to a grand piano, can you replace the piano with something else, such as a table and chairs? What hand props do you need?
Although the room remains the same as in Act II, Eliza has considerably changed. How is her posture and bearing different? How has the tone of her voice changed?
What does Eliza want from Higgins? What does Higgins want? How do their wants inform their movements?
Is Higgins oblivious to Eliza’s frustration or deliberately ignoring it? Is he still “playing with a live doll,” as Higgins’s mother accused him of doing?
When Eliza rejects Higgins’s “reassurance,” is she hurt, seething, or depressed? What is Higgins’s reaction?
Eliza asks what’s to become of her. Higgins muses on possibilities, ending with “then you won’t feel so cheap.” Is he being insensitive, deliberately cutting, or something else? How do his movement and/or reactions reflect his feelings?
How does Eliza’s delivery and movement change when she asks about her clothes?
When does she realize she now has the power? Does Higgins realize it?
When Higgins says she “has wounded me to the heart,” is he being sarcastic, melodramatic, or honest? Why does he resort to anger when confronted with the truth?

Character Relationships

“The difference between a lady and a flower girl is not how she behaves, but how she’s treated.” Eliza shares this realization with Pickering, yet it closely reflects her relationship with Higgins. In the beginning, bad manners and colorful language unite Higgins and Eliza, despite Higgins’s self-professed superiority. Higgins is passionate about proper English but careless when it comes to people and their feelings. His lack of social awareness and condescending language insults and dehumanizes others—especially Eliza, calling her a “draggletailed guttersnipe” and a “presumptuous insect.” Higgins views Eliza as an intellectual experiment rather than a desperate woman, and she remains his “live doll.”

Eliza, in contrast, understands that her dreams require Higgins’s refinement. With ambition, determination, and natural talent, she manifests the outer prerequisites of a lady. However, it is her psychological growth that transforms her from a naive flower girl into a sensitive, caring woman full of self-worth and humanity. When she ultimately stands up to Higgins, it is with independence and hope. Whether Higgins is up to the challenge remains debatable, as he has consistently chosen sarcasm over empathy. In this scene, Eliza gives him yet another chance.

Full Act 4 Dialogue: Eliza Doolittle, Henry Higgins

(Eliza tries to control herself and feel indifferent as she rises and walks across to the hearth to switch off the lights. By the time she gets there she is on the point of screaming. She sits down in Higgins’s chair and holds on hard to the arms. Finally she gives way and flings herself furiously on the floor raging.)

HIGGINS

[in despairing wrath outside] What the devil have I done with my slippers? [He appears at the door].

LIZA

[snatching up the slippers, and hurling them at him one after the other with all her force] There are your slippers. And there. Take your slippers; and may you never have a day’s luck with them!

HIGGINS

[astounded] What on earth—! [He comes to her]. What’s the matter? Get up. [He pulls her up]. Anything wrong?

LIZA

[breathless] Nothing wrong—with YOU. I’ve won your bet for you, haven’t I? That’s enough for you. I don’t matter, I suppose.

HIGGINS

YOU won my bet! You! Presumptuous insect! I won it. What did you throw those slippers at me for?

LIZA

Because I wanted to smash your face. I’d like to kill you, you selfish brute. Why didn’t you leave me where you picked me out of—in the gutter? You thank God it’s all over, and that now you can throw me back again there, do you? [She crisps her fingers, frantically].

HIGGINS

[looking at her in cool wonder] The creature IS nervous, after all.

LIZA

[gives a suffocated scream of fury, and instinctively darts her nails at his face]!!

HIGGINS

[catching her wrists] Ah! would you? Claws in, you cat. How dare you show your temper to me? Sit down and be quiet. [He throws her roughly into the easy-chair].

LIZA

[crushed by superior strength and weight] What’s to become of me? What’s to become of me?

HIGGINS

How the devil do I know what’s to become of you? What does it matter what becomes of you?

LIZA

You don’t care. I know you don’t care. You wouldn’t care if I was dead. I’m nothing to you—not so much as them slippers.

HIGGINS

[thundering] THOSE slippers.

LIZA

[with bitter submission] Those slippers. I didn’t think it made any difference now.

[A pause. Eliza hopeless and crushed. Higgins a little uneasy.]

HIGGINS

[in his loftiest manner] Why have you begun going on like this? May I ask whether you complain of your treatment here?

LIZA

No.

HIGGINS

Has anybody behaved badly to you? Colonel Pickering? Mrs. Pearce? Any of the servants?

LIZA

No.

HIGGINS

I presume you don’t pretend that I have treated you badly.

LIZA

No.

HIGGINS

I am glad to hear it. [He moderates his tone]. Perhaps you’re tired after the strain of the day. Will you have a glass of champagne? [He moves towards the door].

LIZA

No. [Recollecting her manners] Thank you.

HIGGINS

[good-humored again] This has been coming on you for some days. I suppose it was natural for you to be anxious about the garden party. But that’s all over now. [He pats her kindly on the shoulder. She writhes]. There’s nothing more to worry about.

LIZA

No. Nothing more for you to worry about. [She suddenly rises and gets away from him by going to the piano bench, where she sits and hides her face]. Oh God! I wish I was dead.

HIGGINS

[staring after her in sincere surprise] Why? in heaven’s name, why? [Reasonably, going to her] Listen to me, Eliza. All this irritation is purely subjective.

LIZA

I don’t understand. I’m too ignorant.

HIGGINS

It’s only imagination. Low spirits and nothing else. Nobody’s hurting you. Nothing’s wrong. You go to bed like a good girl and sleep it off. Have a little cry and say your prayers: that will make you comfortable.

LIZA

I heard YOUR prayers. “Thank God it’s all over!”

HIGGINS

[impatiently] Well, don’t you thank God it’s all over? Now you are free and can do what you like.

LIZA

[pulling herself together in desperation] What am I fit for? What have you left me fit for? Where am I to go? What am I to do? What’s to become of me?

HIGGINS

[enlightened, but not at all impressed] Oh, that’s what’s worrying you, is it? [He thrusts his hands into his pockets, and walks about in his usual manner, rattling the contents of his pockets, as if condescending to a trivial subject out of pure kindness]. I shouldn’t bother about it if I were you. I should imagine you won’t have much difficulty in settling yourself, somewhere or other, though I hadn’t quite realized that you were going away. [She looks quickly at him: he does not look at her, but examines the dessert stand on the piano and decides that he will eat an apple]. You might marry, you know. [He bites a large piece out of the apple, and munches it noisily]. You see, Eliza, all men are not confirmed old bachelors like me and the Colonel. Most men are the marrying sort (poor devils!); and you’re not bad-looking; it’s quite a pleasure to look at you sometimes—not now, of course, because you’re crying and looking as ugly as the very devil; but when you’re all right and quite yourself, you’re what I should call attractive. That is, to the people in the marrying line, you understand. You go to bed and have a good nice rest; and then get up and look at yourself in the glass; and you won’t feel so cheap.

[Eliza again looks at him, speechless, and does not stir.]
[The look is quite lost on him: he eats his apple with a dreamy expression of happiness, as it is quite a good one.]

HIGGINS

[a genial afterthought occurring to him] I daresay my mother could find some chap or other who would do very well—

LIZA

We were above that at the corner of Tottenham Court Road.

HIGGINS

[waking up] What do you mean?

LIZA

I sold flowers. I didn’t sell myself. Now you’ve made a lady of me I’m not fit to sell anything else. I wish you’d left me where you found me.

HIGGINS

[slinging the core of the apple decisively into the grate] Tosh, Eliza. Don’t you insult human relations by dragging all this cant about buying and selling into it. You needn’t marry the fellow if you don’t like him.

LIZA

What else am I to do?

HIGGINS

Oh, lots of things. What about your old idea of a florist’s shop? Pickering could set you up in one: he’s lots of money. [Chuckling] He’ll have to pay for all those togs you have been wearing today; and that, with the hire of the jewellery, will make a big hole in two hundred pounds. Why, six months ago you would have thought it the millennium to have a flower shop of your own. Come! you’ll be all right. I must clear off to bed: I’m devilish sleepy. By the way, I came down for something: I forget what it was.

LIZA

Your slippers.

HIGGINS

Oh yes, of course. You shied them at me. [He picks them up, and is going out when she rises and speaks to him].

LIZA

Before you go, sir—

HIGGINS

[dropping the slippers in his surprise at her calling him sir] Eh?

LIZA

Do my clothes belong to me or to Colonel Pickering?

HIGGINS

[coming back into the room as if her question were the very climax of unreason] What the devil use would they be to Pickering?

LIZA

He might want them for the next girl you pick up to experiment on.

HIGGINS

[shocked and hurt] Is THAT the way you feel towards us?

LIZA

I don’t want to hear anything more about that. All I want to know is whether anything belongs to me. My own clothes were burnt.

HIGGINS

But what does it matter? Why need you start bothering about that in the middle of the night?

LIZA

I want to know what I may take away with me. I don’t want to be accused of stealing.

HIGGINS

[now deeply wounded] Stealing! You shouldn’t have said that, Eliza. That shows a want of feeling.

LIZA

I’m sorry. I’m only a common ignorant girl; and in my station I have to be careful. There can’t be any feelings between the like of you and the like of me. Please will you tell me what belongs to me and what doesn’t?

HIGGINS

[very sulky] You may take the whole damned houseful if you like. Except the jewels. They’re hired. Will that satisfy you? [He turns on his heel and is about to go in extreme dudgeon].

LIZA

[drinking in his emotion like nectar, and nagging him to provoke a further supply] Stop, please. [She takes off her jewels]. Will you take these to your room and keep them safe? I don’t want to run the risk of their being missing.

HIGGINS

[furious] Hand them over. [She puts them into his hands]. If these belonged to me instead of to the jeweler, I’d ram them down your ungrateful throat. [He perfunctorily thrusts them into his pockets, unconsciously decorating himself with the protruding ends of the chains].

LIZA

[taking a ring off] This ring isn’t the jeweler’s: it’s the one you bought me in Brighton. I don’t want it now. [Higgins dashes the ring violently into the fireplace, and turns on her so threateningly that she crouches over the piano with her hands over her face, and exclaims] Don’t you hit me.

HIGGINS

Hit you! You infamous creature, how dare you accuse me of such a thing? It is you who have hit me. You have wounded me to the heart.

LIZA

[thrilling with hidden joy] I’m glad. I’ve got a little of my own back, anyhow.

HIGGINS

[with dignity, in his finest professional style] You have caused me to lose my temper: a thing that has hardly ever happened to me before. I prefer to say nothing more tonight. I am going to bed.

LIZA

[pertly] You’d better leave a note for Mrs. Pearce about the coffee; for she won’t be told by me.

HIGGINS

[formally] Damn Mrs. Pearce; and damn the coffee; and damn you; and damn my own folly in having lavished MY hard-earned knowledge and the treasure of my regard and intimacy on a heartless guttersnipe. [He goes out with impressive decorum, and spoils it by slamming the door savagely].

[Eliza smiles for the first time; expresses her feelings by a wild pantomime in which an imitation of Higgins’s exit is confused with her own triumph; and finally goes down on her knees on the hearthrug to look for the ring.]